Sunday, December 02, 2007

NRO Shows TNR How It's Done

Editor Kathryn Jean Lopez of the National Review Online apologizes to readers for blog posts made by W. Thomas Smith Jr. that contained unconfirmed reports and unacknowledged educated guesses:

Bottom line: NRO strives to bring you reliable analysis and reporting — whether in presenting articles, essays, or blog posts. Smith did commendable work in Lebanon earlier this year, as he does from S.C. where he is based, as he has done from Iraq, where he has been twice. But rereading some of the posts (see "The Tank" for more detail) and after doing a thorough investigation of some of the points made in some of those posts, I've come to the conclusion that NRO should have provided readers with more context and caveats in some posts from Lebanon this fall. And so I apologize to you, our readers.

Contrast NRO's reaction to The New Republic's months of stonewalling and complaints of conspiracies within the military before issuing a lugubrious pseudo-retraction. Note also that Lopez manages to make her point in four succinct paragraphs, while TNR's Franklin Foer blathered on for 13 pages before coming to the point, sort of, on the fourteenth.